| From the Where2sing.com forum: KJ Charges $5 for people to sing Don't Stop Believing
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2010/12/a_karaoke_jockey_explains_why.php
As we reported last week, San Francisco karaoke jockey Roger Niner has taken the drastic step of charging an extra fee for customers to sing 'Don't Stop Believing.' (We know.) Niner, a seasoned pro with many years of full-time experience in the drunken fraying of larynxs, kindly explained to us last week what this move was all about. He even speculated on what makes this particular song -- birthed by San Francisco's own Journey, and taken up by the S.F. Giants as the official anthem for the team's World Series-winning 2010 season -- so insanely popular.
If you go to karaoke bars, 'Don't Stop Believing' is the No. 1 most-requested song. When I first started going to karaoke, I was caught up in the wave as well: 'Oh, 'Don't stop Believing,' cool! Everyone has a good time! Yay!' But as I have been doing this for as long as I have, I hear it every night. When I was starting my business, I actually didn't put the song in my songbook. I purposely left it out, thinking people might not see it and then not think about it, but that didn't work.
So one night somebody signed up to sing it. And then I had two other people that were unrelated to each other come up and request the song through the course of the four-hour show. And I just snapped. I'm not going to delete it, because that's just going to be a disaster. So I said, 'Alright, I'm going to make some money from this.' So the policy is, $5 to sing, that $5 goes into a fund that I use to purchase new songs for the book. And if you look at the sheet that I have in my book, it straight says, I have 11,000-plus other songs to sing for free. You can find one. [Laughs.] I just had to do it.
The thing is, it's not as much of a deterrent as I hoped it would be. It has definitely whittled down the requests. I do have people that say 'Hey, I want to sing it,' and I say, 'I'm sorry, I'm charging $5.' And I always am very polite about that, just to let them understand I'm not targeting them or isolating them, but they will say 'Oh,' and wander off. I had some people the other night leave because they were mad.
***Full article at link
Submitted by LeatherBaron on 10-02-2011 Meet karaoke hosts and singers in the Where2sing.com forums . . . | KARAOKE in AustraliaYou've found the #1 website with the original and biggest karaoke gig listings database listing nearly 1,000 gigs across all states of Australia - each listing with full venue name, address, phone number plus extensive information about the gig itself. Read feedback from singers who have already visited the venue, and see information such as songlist size, crowd size, type of singer and even how much applause you can expect when you visit each gig.Or visit the forums where both singers and hosts meet and chat - including State-chat forums where you can make friends whom you'll meet up with at a venue near you. And there are the Gig Reviews, the constantly updated 'National Top 10 Karaoke Venues' chart, specialised lists of venues for Under 18s and currently running Competitions, lists for karaoke rooms, restaurants, karaoke hosts and supplliers, and karaoke news from all around the world. Of course, the best way to keep up to date is by opting in for the FREE weekly Karaoke News Email. Where2sing.com | |
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